I speak personally, I should add, not of the world in general. I can't find my spring post - maybe I didn't do one - but I recall only taking about 4-5 frames off, which is pretty poor by spring standards - I normally expect a couple of supers. Two days ago (I mention this because I put in the Apistan, so I need to remember to take it out 6 weeks later) I opened up the hive to discover that the top super could be trivially lifted off, which is a bad sign, since a light super is an empty super. The next one down was a bit better, but mostly only because they had glued it down the fiends. In the brood box there were plenty of bees, though perhaps with a gap on the LHS of a frame or two - not quite happy with that. But, they were storing honey down there. So I put in the Apistan and left them to get on with it - it was a sunny day, at last.
[Update: 2011/10/28: a sunny still morning and I happened to be at home, so I took the Apistan out. The bees were fine.Pulled down a few nettles. It would be good to crop some more trees to allow the hive to get winter sun. Or raise the hive, or pull it back a few feet.]
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Very bad two summers now for bees and other pollenators; no bumble bees, no solitary bees, not even any wasps (haven't seen those for several years). My Oregon Grapes don't produce nor a few other plants which previously propagated without human assistance.
:-(
Just in case you have not seen this:
A fly species - previously known to parasitize bumble bees - has now been observed to parasitize honey bees.
[Bleurgh. Comments elsewhere on theodicy, de-conversion, sex and fat refers... -W]